The Keep:Handy Tips to Manage Damage and Avoid Death in Habitica
Handy Tips to Manage Damage and Avoid Death in Habitica Text by Gryphonknight and Gryphonkit (who share a nest) Formatting by Sonnet73 ( http://habitica.wikia.com/wiki/User:Sonnet73 ) of the Wizards of the Wiki Guild ( https://habitica.com/#/options/groups/guilds/9a163b28-ebcf-4e52-87de-5c040ed0f8f8 ) I recommend you read this through once, before clicking any of the links. -BACKGROUND- First, and most importantly, Habitica needs to work for you as a list utility. If it is not working as a list utility, then it is not working. Once you get used to Habitica as a list utility, then you can work on using its RPG rewards as motivation for you to complete items on your list. You cannot use bicycling, Frisbee, or swimming as fun exercises to improve your health until you first learn to ride a bike, throw a Frisbee, or swim. When you add a brand new Daily to Habitica, it gives you a large reward for completing it each day - but it also gives you a large penalty if you miss it. This is okay when you have been using Habitica for a while, but as a new character, *ALL* of your Dailies are new, so all of the penalties are large. If you have twenty daily items, and you only finish five, you will get a huge penalty for fifteen missed dailies. (http://habitica.wikia.com/wiki/Tasks#Dailies) You can use the ideas in this article to make Habitica easier to use, more fun and more rewarding. You can use these ideas even if you are not currently dying in Habitica, and even if you are not a new user of Habitica. (The newbies don’t get *all* the fun.) This starting penalty for adding a large number of new Dailies does not apply to Habits and To-Dos. -ADJUSTING DIFFICULTY OR PENALTIES- Reducing Penalties or Changing Difficulty New dailies, recently added to Habitica, inflict large penalties when you miss them. But when you first create a Habitica character, you are adding a bunch of new dailies to Habitica. Thus when you start Habitica, you are adding a bunch of dailies that can inflict large penalties on your character if you miss them. The default difficulty for a daily is Easy. When you first start using Habitica, change this from default difficulty of Easy to a difficulty of Trivial. Once you master Habitica, you can change the difficulty from Trivial to Easy, or higher. Explanations for Trivial Dailies If you add a Daily “Brush Teeth” with a difficulty of Trivial, you will only take 1/10 the damage if you miss it than you would if it was set to the default of Easy difficulty. If you complete the Daily “Brush Teeth” (difficulty Trivial) you will still get the same amount of mana, and still do the same damage during a Boss Quest. When you are higher level, and have better equipment, you can change Daily “Brush Teeth” from Trivial difficulty to Easy. Your better stats will reduce the penalty if you miss it. When you have the Daily “Brush Teeth” for a couple of months, you can change it from Trivial difficulty to Easy. The more times you complete the Daily “Brush Teeth” the lower the penalty for missing it. This is balanced by lowering the reward for completing it, but compensated for by the higher rewards you get for having better stats from higher level and better equipment. Newbie Tip: Set your three easiest Dailies to complete in “Real Life” (whatever that is) to Easy Difficulty. This will let you use Habitica as a list utility and you’ll still accumulate some XP to help you level. Setting Daily “Brush Teeth” to Trivial Difficulty See the following link. (http://habitica.wikia.com/wiki/Difficulty#Trivial) Eliminating Health/Mana Penalties or Changing Day Due When you start using Habitica, you can set a daily task to **Not Be Required** on a particular day (or not due ever or Day due= none.) While set to Day due= none, the daily will be permanently Grey. Newbie Tip: Set ALL your daily tasks to “not due ever”. If you do a greyed-out task, you still get rewards for it - but you don’t lose any Health or Mana for not doing it! Once you master Habitica, you can change the Dailies from Day due= none to Day due= everyday. Setting Daily “Brush Teeth” to Day due= none does has several disadvantages. If you miss the Daily “Brush Teeth” (Day due= none) you will miss any rewards (XP, gold, food drops, etc.) you would have earned if you actually completed the daily. Dailies with Day due= none also do not show up when you use the “Due” filter, and there are no active penalties for missing it (streaks do not reset, mana does not go down, health does not go down). Some people find active penalties help motivate them better than rewards. Setting Daily “Brush Teeth” to Day due= none When you create the daily, choose “On Certain Days” the week. Then click on all seven days to deactivate the daily for every day of the week (Sunday through Saturday). Dailies with Day due= none start every day grey in Habitica. (http://habitica.wikia.com/wiki/Dailies#Repeat.C2.A0Options) and (http://habitica.wikia.com/wiki/Dailies#Grey_Dailies_2) Newbie Tip for Day due= none: I also recommend including the term NeverDue, or a similar term (DueNever, shadow, ghost, beginner, new, etc.) or similar emoji (:construction: , :ghost: , :new: , :beginner: , etc.), when you name your task. Example: Daily “Brush Teeth, NeverDue”. This lets you search for all Day due= none Dailies buy searching for NeverDue and thus see which ones you have not yet checked off today. You also want to do this because any incomplete grey dailies could be a (Day due= none) dailies or they could be dailies due once, or more, days per week. When you search for “NeverDue”, or your personal term for it, you can see which Dailies (Day due=none) are completed today, and which are not completed. -OTHER TIPS- Search Function The search function in Habitica is your most powerful tool as your lists grow longer and become more complex. Do Not be afraid to put long descriptions in the extra notes section of a task (Daily, To-Do, Habit). Extra notes will be searchable. Example: for you daily “Take Allergy Medication” you could add the name of the medication, the key words Health, Morning, with Meal, with Food. Searching for Meal would bring up your daily “Take Allergy Medication” and all other tasks with Meal in their title, extra notes section, or checklists. (http://habitica.wikia.com/wiki/Dailies#Editing_a_Daily) For evening dailies use a “Yesterday” daily Many people forget to check off Habitica dailies in the evening. Many doctors advice turning off electronics several hours before bedtime. You can solve these problems by adding yesterday to an evening, bedtime, or night daily. Example: “Brush teeth after dinner, Yesterday” would be checked off in the morning, if you brushed your teeth after dinner yesterday. Each morning I search “yesterday” then check off any of the dailies I finished the previous evening. Wiki Article for Yesterday Dailies (http://habitica.wikia.com/wiki/Dailies#Yester-Dailies) Save gold for Health potions If you die, you lose all your gold, a level and one random piece of equipment. You can buy the piece of equipment back with gold. But it is better not to die and lose the level. Before you spend gold on equipment, make sure you have a decent amount of gold saved for potions. You regain 15 Health for 25 gold, so 100 gold will heal anything that does not kill your character. Depending on how much damage you take (from dailies, negative habits, and quests), you may want to save anywhere from 100- 2000 gold for Health potions. Gold Bank for Health potions To protect the gold for Health potions, you might consider a gold bank. This will also prevent you from spending it on other things (Oooo shiny…). (http://habitica.wikia.com/wiki/Sample_Custom_Rewards#Creating_a_Gold_Bank) Purchasing Equipment When buying equipment, as a general rule of thumb, the more expensive, the more powerful. If you are a mage or healer, first upgrade items that increase your INT. INT increases XP rewards. You heal all damage when you level, all your stats go up so you take less damage from tasks, and you get another ability point to spend. If you are a rogue, upgrade items that increase your PER first. PER increases gold rewards and drops (Food, hatching potions, eggs, etc.). Gold can buy Health potions. In a pinch, drops can be sold for gold. You can also sell them for gold if you have a ton of one type, like desert hatching potions or cactus eggs. If you are a healer or warrior, upgrade items that increase your CON last. Currently, CON and Health are problematic. Increasing your other stats will be more helpful, especially at lower levels before you can earn legendary equipment. (http://habitica.wikia.com/wiki/Legendary_Equipment) Otherwise buy equipment from the most expensive to the least expensive. Note: The most powerful equipment in the game can only be earned in quests or challenges. Reduce your number of dailies, increase your number of habits If changing difficulty to trivial or changing Day due= none, does not work for you, your last option is to remove some of your dailies. Two ways you can do this are removing dailies or converting dailies to habits. At first, it seems to defeat the purpose of using Habitica as a list utility to remove things from your lists. But sometimes it can be really helpful to start with a small list of the most important dailies. In the future, you may add more, going from 3 important dailies to 6 then 9 then 12, etc. Or you may chose to replace ones you don’t need to track anymore. You might go from your 9 most important dailies during the Winter holidays to your 9 most important dailies during the Summer holidays. You can also convert dailies into Habits. Instead of the daily “Eat 3 servings of vegetables” you could have the habit “Eat 1 serving of vegetables” and click it +1 for 3 times if you eat 3 servings and -1 if you fail that day. Later you can keep these as Habits, convert them to dailies, or keep the habit and add a matching daily. Habitica has many ways you can customize it to track your lists. Take a Photo Reminder If you have trouble remembering if you completed a task, take a photo or a screen shot that has some sort of timestamp. Example: If you have a Daily, “Take Allergy Medication”, but you keep forgetting if you took it, take a picture of the bottle when you take the medication on Wednesday (next to a calendar if your camera doesn't use timestamps). Then delete Tuesday’s reminder photo. Weekly or Monthly Reevaluation Every week, or every month, you should reevaluate your tasks (Habits, To-Dos, and Dailies). This is important for your Dailies, and especially any you are having trouble completing or you no longer have trouble completing. Look at your dailies that you are successfully completing, and you may change some of these to easy, medium or hard dailies. Your penalties for not completing them will actually be lower than when you first started them, because they will be “more blue” (http://habitica.wikia.com/wiki/Task_Value#Effects_of_Task_Value). However, the rewards will be higher since your INT, PER and STR will be higher. This is especially true if you start with a lot of Day due= none dailies. Look at your dailies your are not successfully completing. You might need to change it to a “Yesterday” daily, change its difficulty to Trivial, change its Day due= none, break it up into a group of small dailies, change it to a Habit, or remove it from Habitica. Expert Mode You can increase the difficulty to easy, medium or hard on your dailies, and set Day due= everyday, once you master Habitica. If you want, once you become comfortable with Habitica as a list utility, you can spend 4 gems and buy a Fortify Potion. It will reset all your tasks to “brand new” which will give you large rewards for them. I don’t recommend this, because the penalties will also be large if you miss something. But you can chose this option. (http://habitica.wikia.com/wiki/Fortify_Potion) I hope this article helps you, your family, your friends, and others to enjoy Habitica. I hope you find fun in Habitica but most important of all, I hope to help Habitica work for you and improve you life and the life of those around you. -ADDITIONAL READING- Multi-Class Guide by Gryphonknight Handy Healer Trick- Gryphonknight's Mana Spike Guide (improve mana & damage) Category:The Mage's Tower